Mobilization Day 5

I was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday around 4:00pm during the blizzard and made the short walk across Michigan Ave. back to the Omni hotel.  Overall, I have felt pretty good since leaving the hospital, just slightly more fatigued than usual.

After resting most of the day on Wednesday, I decided to venture out to the Field museum on Thursday.  The last time I’d been to the Field museum was after my boot camp graduation from Naval Training Center Great Lakes in 1990, but the museum lacked Sue during my last visit – the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered which was unveiled in May 2000.  It was well worth the trip and it felt good to walk around the museum for a couple hours. 

Today I returned to Northwestern at 9:00am and had my blood work and veins checked.  Everything looked good, WBC was 4.1 and platelets were around 200.  My blood work will be checked again on Monday morning and I’ll most likely be neutropenic on Monday/Tuesday of next week.  To lessen chance of infection, I’ll avoid large crowds and start Ciprofloxacin (antibiotic) and Fluconazole (antifungal) tomorrow.

The primary objective over the next several days is to ensure a sufficient number of stem cells are mobilized from my bone marrow to my peripheral blood using a growth factor called Neupogen.  Beginning tomorrow, I’ll administer two shots of Neupogen to myself daily until my stem harvest on 10 February.